just one.

it seems like girls dress to impress and love to get attention... but we don't need to attract every guy on the face of the planet... and not even twenty or five. it feels good when i realize that all i need is one guy... one amazing guy to look my way and think, "hey, she's a pretty cool girl."... that's what i remind myself when i feel down on myself... because i'm not looking to impress the universe, i'm just looking to find that one person... that one guy who is just right for me, someone who loves me as i am, not because i try to dress to impress or wear layers of makeup to hide myself, but someone who loves me for all that i am, all my mistakes, blemishes, and ugliness... realizing that it's scars that make someone even more beautiful... that it's through hard times that a person flourishes and becomes not just ordinary but magnificent, and through that is substance, rather than mere surface beauty that will fade.
if every guy turned when i passed, i would worry that i cared too much for my outer self and not enough about my heart. i love feeling beautiful, and i love feeling noticed, but i don't want anyone to only love me for how i look... i want a man to fall in love with my heart, with my soul, with everything that is not material, with the substance of who i am... not with my choice of fashions or the hairstyle i don or the shades of makeup that happen to be pretty on me.
just one. for who i am.

freedom?

one more day of VBS... one more day. don't take me wrong here, i adore kids, but getting up at 7am over the summer to spend 4 hours with a bunch of screaming, running young kids gets tiring after awhile. i always prefer being one on one with someone... like talking to a kid who is lonely or wants his mommy... or making up little games to play with the shy little girls who don't always want to play with the other kids. i once was that shy kid. i understand. and it's so much fun to have conversations with four-yr-olds!... but what is so frustrating and infuriating is when a kid just won't cooperate. when a kid just refuses to listen. those kids are what make VBS a handful, a frustration, and a source of severe tiredness. i would love to have kids someday -- i just hope none of them turn out to be terrors.

one drop in the sea of a lifetime

what can it all mean, how with this help to shape me into who he wants me to be?
maybe it's just one drop in the sea of a lifetime,
but it's one little drop of me.
--and i can't help but wonder what it means.
at every turn, doors open and windows close, but where does this motion, this rhythm of life fit into the greater scheme of all eternity, humanity, and me?
since returning to the U.S., i have, without even trying, become involved with little kid ministries... it was just a phone call, a plea to help one sunday, and i'm suddenly on the "to call" list... so, naturally, that's where i spend my sunday mornings, before the second church service... with 4 year olds.... and i don't mind it in the least -- i love little kids.
...but then i get another call from the pastor of early childhood ministries asking me to help with VBS... maybe even being a teacher... i said no to the latter, but agreed to help out. ... so now i'm going to be spending my week as a teacher's assisstant for vacation bible school.
...oh yah... and i babysat saturday night. what's with all these connections? my family has never really been close to families with young kids -- at least since i was in high school, so i've only really babysat cousins... but it leads me to wonder... what does God have for me in all this? how is this experience, these open doors, going to play into the grand scheme of my life? what could he have for me, for this tapestry of me, that he is weaving such an interesting new color of thread into who i am?

It's interesting being in the in-between, the time between my past life and my next.  no, memories and people don't go away, and yes, everything that has happened in my past has shaped who I am and shapes who I am becoming and who I will be, but at the same time there is a feeling of letting go... yet still hanging on.  It's hard.  I haven't really kept good contact with people and I've been lonely, and probably a little depressed.  I feel almost trapped in this house because I don't know that many people and I tend toward introvertish behaviors anyway.

I can't wait until the fall and leaving for Biola, but at the same time there is always an underlying fear.... because I always fear most what I do not know.  Biola will be a new experience for me... and will be the start of another part of my life.

I wish I could clear my thoughts, but I can't.  They are all jumbled in my head and I can't seem to sort them out.  I'm happy to be here rather than there -- there are so many things I love about here that I had forgotten about, but I miss the people.  I miss school and daily interactions with people I have known for years... with people that I grew up with.